The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING M. E. White

It was Saturday. When I got up I found my cousins (I was raised by an uncle, an aunt, and two older cousins) packing away a lot of men’s clothing that hung in the closet in Uncle Joe’s bedroom. I said, “Good morning.”

They both smiled and said, “Go call the Goodwill Industries, darling.”

I said that I would be very happy to phone the Goodwill. First, however, I made a routine check of the house—for Uncle Joe. I didn’t find him, and so, naturally, I assumed that he was no longer with us and that we were giving his clothes away, that’s the way it was with Aunt Maude. We gave all her clothes to the Salvation Army. I called the Goodwill.

Then I just sat there in the hall for a while and thought about calling a practitioner to pray for me. I have been thinking wrong all week and am still menstruating as a result. Interestingly enough, I think wrong on the average of once a month, but I hate to call the practitioner this often; so, instead, I just thought that I would work on it myself. I have had an extremely religious upbringing, but this religion is no fly-by-Sunday affair, and one has to work constantly at becoming better and better. That is what finally happened to Uncle Joe, you see, he just became so good that he finally divested himself of all mortal error. Right there at the end, though, I thought he’d lost his faith —moaning like he did. That is probably one reason that I am menstruating today because I thought wrong of Uncle Joe.

I went back into the bedroom and relayed the phone message. “They’ll come this afternoon,” I said. My cousins were still busy emptying drawers of socks and ties. A large number of boxes were piled in the hallway, and I began to drag these out to the service porch.

What bothered me about Uncle Joe’s disappearance was the necessity of speaking to Miss Collins about it. Miss Collins is one of the headshrinkers at our school, which is quite progressive, and, since I don’t take Health and Hygiene, because of a religious conflict, I spend an hour every day talking to her. Last week she got quite upset when she found that Aunt Maude was no longer with us either. She said, “How is your aunt? I haven’t seen her for quite some time,” and I had to admit that I didn’t know because I hadn’t seen her for almost a year myself.

After all the clothes had been bundled and lugged out to the service porch, I drove my cousins down to the hairdresser’s. They always have their hair done on Saturdays. Then I came back to wait for the Goodwill truck to come. The truck and three men came about the middle of the afternoon.

“Lots of clothes,” the driver observed.

“Yeah,” I said, dragging out boxes.

“You folks moving out or something?”

I said, “No,” and smiled, trying in a friendly manner to discourage conversation.

All three of the Goodwill men were dressed, or tattooed, similarly: battleships, anchors, hearts, large mothers, pinup girls designated, from the left: Ida, May, and Rosalie. The driver of the truck also had a large number of butterflies tattooed around his navel, and his Levi’s were pulled low enough to make me wonder where the butterflies stopped, but I’ve learned to keep my curiosity to myself.

“That it, girlie?”

I nodded, and they drove away.

Then I went down to the Farmer’s Market to get the bread. We get three loaves every two weeks and freeze them. At the Market I ran into a couple of girls from school. They said, “Hi, diphtheria,” referring to a disease that I don’t believe in and a shot that I did not take with the rest of my classmates. Instead, I had spent the time with Miss Collins, who said that, even though the shots conflicted with my religious beliefs, I should take them in respect to those who believe differently and might, therefore, catch diphtheria from me. If I don’t get the disease, I can’t see how anyone is going to catch it from me. I did not upset Miss Collins with this simple explanation, however, and told her that I would think seriously over the matter of contagious diseases.

After I got the bread, I picked up my cousins at Ivan’s. At dinner that night there was another empty place and an extra potato. We all sat at one end of the dining-room table.

Clarice said, “Have another potato,” at regular intervals.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t very hungry.

Finally, Alice ate the potato, which was a relief. I mean it was nice to get rid of the potato. “Did the Goodwill take everything?” she asked.

I said, yes, that they had come about two.

“That’s nice. I hope it didn’t keep you from doing anything you wanted to do this afternoon.”

I said that it didn’t. It didn’t.

After dinner I went right to bed. At first, I couldn’t get to sleep, and, then, when I did, I had a dream. People started crawling over me like ants. The room squirmed with them, big, dark, on the walls, the ceiling, the dresser, and me. Then, suddenly, they began to disappear, the ones at the back first and then the ones nearer to me. Pretty soon I was all alone. I went outside—nobody. I drove down Wilshire to Figueroa without meeting another driver although there were a few empty cars parked at random in the street and at stop signs. Olympic was strangely lifeless, too. Finally, I stopped at a gas station to use the pay phone; no one I knew answered, so I phoned some people I didn’t know in the A’s. They didn’t answer either.

In the morning Clarice shook me and said, “Get up, darling.” I was certainly surprised to see her. “You won’t have time for breakfast if you don’t get up,” she said. I just stared at her.

“Get up,” Clarice repeated. She combed a high forehead wave of bluish gray hair into place and smiled at me in the dresser mirror.

I got up and brushed my teeth. After I had dressed and stuffed down two biscuits, we left for church.

The lesson was “Probation after Death,” and the church was filled when we arrived, which struck me funny. Dreams can seem very real, and I wasn’t quite awake. The first reader got up and said, “Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.”

Then everyone stood up to recite the responsive reading:

“Know ye not, that so many of us as we were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life.

“For if we have been planted together in the likeness of death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”

At this point my mind began to wander. I pictured myself pushing the rock away from the sepulchre and staring down at the nail holes in my hands. Then I sat down on the ground and began examining the holes in my feet. A lot of other people followed me out of the cave and began doing the same thing:

“No one will believe it when I tell them.”

“Where are my gloves? Looking at these holes makes me feel like puking.”

“By God, I can stick two fingers through each hand.”

“Now ain’t that lucky. I can damn near get my whole fist through mine.”

“I’m scarred for life.”

“You’re lucky to be here at all. I’ve been suffocating in that cave for three days. Bats, and I don’t know what all, probably in there.”

As more people began to pour out of the cave, I saw Uncle Joe. He came over to me and said, “It’s getting so you stand in line for everything these days. Can’t do a damn thing but what there are a million other people with the same idea.”

Uncle Joe was just about to experiment sticking his umbrella through his left foot when I focused again on the reader, who was just closing with the benediction: “Mind is immortal truth; matter is mortal error.”

That afternoon I went to the beach. I took the Bible with me and marked next week’s lesson. There were a lot of Muscle Beach recruits at Playa del Rey since Muscle Beach had been closed. They were all tattooed. I think tattoos are interesting because they are essentially attempts to retain permanent error. I had to laugh, but I tried not to be critical.

I had the same dream that night that I had had the night before. I phoned the L.A. Times, Madison 5-4321, to ask them where everyone was, but the phone just rang and rang and rang, and no one answered. I thought that, perhaps, everyone was in Russia making friends or maybe in Bombay sterilizing the Indians. Although this idea was somewhat consoling, I was still a little disappointed that no one had told me they were going. Just when I was really beginning to feel relieved with my solution, however, I saw the entire population of L.A. nailed up, yowling with pain, heads to the left, one cross after another. When someone finally lighted the fire under them, I began to toss and turn until I woke myself up. I was much happier to be awake.

I ate two eggs for breakfast this morning. I didn’t really want two, but I was still harboring an “extra-potato” idea of our food supply, and I didn’t want anything to go to waste. I also had some orange juice, fresh—we have an orange tree in the back yard—some biscuits, and some mashed-ant jam, black raspberry, I believe. Then I washed everything down with Postum, which is made from vegetables and doesn’t contain any caffein. We don’t drink coffee or any other stimulants because, if one were to heighten his imaginative powers in any way, a number of mortal errors might occur. “The Creator of ideas is not the creator of illusions.” I stacked my breakfast dishes in the sink, put on a jacket, and then walked to school.

At school the first thing I did was stop by Miss Collins’s office, which was a very busy place, as usual, and I had to wait. Now and then nearly everyone is sent down to see one of the headshrinkers for one reason or another, a fact that the school joyfully interprets to mean that the students need help, a need that they, forward-looking and progressive as they are, have satisfied sufficiently by hiring four headshrinkers. The school administration likes to face the facts. While I appreciate this positive approach, I still feel very uncomfortable about seeing Miss Collins, which I have the slight suspicion is in the same category as seeing a doctor. The mind is, after all, the cure, not the disease.

The bell rang, and everyone else left—probably for Health and Hygiene, which is a required course except by special dispensation. I said, “Hello,” to Miss Collins and smiled. I might say that I am almost always nice and pleasant—and patient, thinking right as I do. The greeting was somehow the easiest; I slowed down considerably after that and didn’t say anything for a few minutes while I tried to think of a suitable explanation for Uncle Joe, one that Miss Collins would understand and yet wouldn’t disturb my own beliefs. I finally came up with, “My uncle’s gone.” That seemed to me to be a reasonable assertion, but it visibly upset Miss Collins probably because it came just the week after the news about Aunt Maude. Under the circumstances, I tried to be more cheerful.

“Where did he go?” she asked suspiciously.

Well, I didn’t really know exactly, I admitted, but we had sent all his clothes to the Goodwill, and he hadn’t been to dinner for a couple of nights; so he wasn’t there all right.

“You mean he died?” Miss Collins asked, emphasizing the last word sharply.

I said, “No.”

“Suppose you explain in your own words what did happen to him.”

“Well,” I said, “his mind just joined the Universal Mind, and, when it did, it forgot its material imperfections such as the body, which is, after all, only formed of mortal error and illusion.” Clearly, this explanation didn’t satisfy Miss Collins, and, since three days hadn’t elapsed yet, I didn’t find it altogether satisfactory myself; because, for all I knew, Uncle Joe was still waiting to be resurrected somewhere in the vicinity of Golgotha, a thought that led me to conclude that sterilization wasn’t going to help the overpopulation problem in the Middle East much.

“When your aunt died,” Miss Collins asked very slowly, although she enunciated quite clearly anyway, “where did they bury the body?”

“They gave her clothes to the Salvation Army,” I said, in as near an approximation to an answer as I could arrive at.

Miss Collins withdrew a file of papers on which she had previously noted my views in a cramped, pinched handwriting. She wrote down a few words that I attempted to read upside down but couldn’t. I rather suspected that they said, “Total lack of perspective,” as that seemed to be one of her favorite commentaries, one that I had read backwards on several other occasions. Then she started in about my parents. Miss Collins shows an ever increasing interest in my parents.

In a somewhat condescending manner, she asked again if both my parents were . . . “gone.”

I said that I supposed so. I was just being agreeable really; I didn’t have to answer at all because we have discussed this very same thing any number of times. Still, Miss Collins always acted as though it were news.

She asked if I remembered my parents at all.

I said, “No.”

Then she asked if I had ever seen any pictures of them.

I said, “No,” again, and then I happened to think of a newspaper picture I’d seen and qualified my answer by saying that I had once seen a blurred picture of my mother in an old newspaper. The paper, I believe, was wrapped around some dill pickles in the garage, but I’m not absolutely sure about that.

This revelation made Miss Collins begin to write again. She said, “You did,” as though she had just come to a conclusion.

I said, yes, that there was a long article about her and how she had jumped off a building.

Miss Collins lost some of her previous enthusiasm. “And how do you feel about that?” she- asked.

Well, I admitted that, at the time, I had thought it fairly amusing, but it had just slipped my mind. I think newspapers sensationalize everything and don’t usually read them; I think one should only read worthwhile, uplifting material that portrays the good in man, not degrading pulp.

Then Miss Collins asked if I still had the article, and I said that I’d thrown it away, which seemed to disappoint her.

I explained that I didn’t think that sort of nonsense was worth saving, and Miss Collins, I could tell, was very impressed with my reasoning because she copied that statement down word for word. It is always interesting to me what some people will pick out as important.

“What did they do with the body?”

“What body?” Then I decided that she must have meant, “What did the newspapers do with the body?” and I said, “Oh they had it splattered all over Fifth and Flower, right downtown.”

She said that she was referring to my uncle’s body now. “Everyone is free to have whatever religious or nonreligious view of death that he may please. When you say that you don’t believe in death, what you really mean is that you believe in a spiritual afterlife, but, nevertheless, the fact remains that the body has to be disposed of.” Miss Collins can be very tolerant when she gets things worded around to her satisfaction.

I said that I not only didn’t believe in his death but that I didn’t believe in his body either. I said this mainly for dramatic effect as I suspect that Miss Collins is a materialist, and, although I never show any prejudices and am as friendly as possible to those with different opinions, I always maintain my own beliefs whether it does them any good or not.

“One has to make some concessions to the views of others. Society and . . . et cetera.”

Often, at times like this, I play a game called “logical positivist” where one makes minute inquiry into other people’s grammar and sentential constructions, confuses their vocabulary in every possible manner, and pays no attention to the standard procedures of communication. Although I feel that this is a sensible approach to Miss Collins’s foray of jargon, it does make one appear unfortunately naive so I don’t play the game much.

Next, Miss Collins began a long harangue about normal responses to one’s uncle’s “passing” into which I interjected several polite replies. Health and Hygiene was almost over, and I kept glancing at the clock. I also noticed that Miss Collins had taken a good page and a half of notes although I seriously doubt that a direct quotation would have resulted in that much. Miss Collins is, I believe, somewhat imaginative.

When the bell rang, I left and went to my classes. In art I made several charcoal drawings. I think that all art should be as uplifting and serene as possible, and so, usually, I just take some blue charcoal, blue is my favorite color, and then I cover a piece of drawing paper with it. One can, if they hurry, make several such drawings in one period. Today, I made three; I have done more. They are all quite good—nice and blue, all of them.

Next, I went to history, American history—meaning the Civil War, as usual. There is another history class at this same time called the Civil War Period, a title that seems to me to be a lot more honest and straightforward. Now and then, however, I work up some enthusiasm for American history’s progression as I am well aware that the world didn’t end in 1865. I have not, of course, expressed to my teacher my general disinclination to be excited by the study of the Civil War, year after year.

After a rousing list of famous dates, I went to math. We looked at obtuse triangles. From there I went to lunch and then to Latin and French classes. It was generally a nice day; I wouldn’t want to complain.

The sun was shining, and I walked down Pico to Beverly Drive and then home. When I got to the house, my cousins weren’t there. Usually, they get home from work before I get home from school, but today they didn’t; in fact, they weren’t there for dinner either; so I just had a sandwich.

Finally, these two policemen came to the door. I don’t know why I went with them except that I didn’t have anything else to do and they seemed very nice—they wanted to know about my cousins. I didn’t know that my cousins knew any policemen, but I just assumed that maybe they did after all, and I was very pleasant because any friends of my cousins are also friends of mine. After a while, however, it became apparent that they didn’t know my cousins after all because they wanted me to describe them in great detail. I don’t mean to seem critical, but I tend to find the police mentality somewhat delinquent. I had to repeat myself over and over again. I didn’t complain, of course, and don’t now. I suppose that some people just have a greater memory span than others, a peculiar and interesting fact, but I know that in God’s mind it doesn’t really matter and that it shouldn’t bother me, one of God’s creatures, either.